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Lot Essay
The picture was painted seventeen years after Dadd was committed to Bethlem Hospital, Southwark, for the murder of his father in 1844. In 1857 he had been moved to a more airy room converted for the use of the 'better class' of criminal patients, and in 1864 he would be transferred to the newly-built Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire, where he stayed until his death.
Born and brought up in the Medway town of Chatham, Dadd had always drawn inspiration from the sea, and it remained a recurring theme in his work in Bethlem: the best-known examples are probably the watercolours of Jesus Christ walking on the Sea (1852; Victoria and Albert Museum) and The Pilot Ship (1858-9; Tate Gallery). The Diadonus appears to be a companion picture to Sailing Ships (now in the collection of the late Paul Mellon, reproduced in the Tate exhibition catalogue, 1974, p. 121) which is contemporary in date, virtually identical in size and technique, and shows the sea almost supernaturally calm in contrast to the rough sea in our picture. The 1974 exhibition catalogue described The Diadonus as 'a work of pure imagination, it has nevertheless the vitality and immediacy of actual experience: the sea, driven by the gale, breaks furiously over half-submerged rocks in the foreground, while in the middle distance ships of many kinds - and to the right of the centre, the warship Diadonus - stand-to or are driven with the wind. Their frailty contrasts with the stability of the massive rocks, and the fort seen on the horizon to the right; and in the afterglow of sunset, which throws a veil of pale rose across the sky, they are like the phantom vessels of a dream'.
Born and brought up in the Medway town of Chatham, Dadd had always drawn inspiration from the sea, and it remained a recurring theme in his work in Bethlem: the best-known examples are probably the watercolours of Jesus Christ walking on the Sea (1852; Victoria and Albert Museum) and The Pilot Ship (1858-9; Tate Gallery). The Diadonus appears to be a companion picture to Sailing Ships (now in the collection of the late Paul Mellon, reproduced in the Tate exhibition catalogue, 1974, p. 121) which is contemporary in date, virtually identical in size and technique, and shows the sea almost supernaturally calm in contrast to the rough sea in our picture. The 1974 exhibition catalogue described The Diadonus as 'a work of pure imagination, it has nevertheless the vitality and immediacy of actual experience: the sea, driven by the gale, breaks furiously over half-submerged rocks in the foreground, while in the middle distance ships of many kinds - and to the right of the centre, the warship Diadonus - stand-to or are driven with the wind. Their frailty contrasts with the stability of the massive rocks, and the fort seen on the horizon to the right; and in the afterglow of sunset, which throws a veil of pale rose across the sky, they are like the phantom vessels of a dream'.